


Starlight Mind

by diadelphous



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Canon-Typical Violence, Space Opera
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 02:57:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diadelphous/pseuds/diadelphous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham is an Empath who best understands the darkness of the human mind, asked by the Galactic Coalition to join Captain Jack Crawford on a search to find the brutal, terrifying Star Stag Killer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Starlight Mind

Will hadn’t been on a starship for ages. They weren’t good places for Empaths. Too many people in too close a proximity, and nowhere to go if you needed the particular silence of solitude. 

At least his room was tucked away toward the bottom of the ship, nestled between the docking bay and the cargo hold, where there weren’t many people during the voyage. He was down there now, stretched out on his bed, the viewing shields pulled open so he could look out at the stars twinkling in the black. Now _that_ was solitude. Will liked to think about it sometimes, what it would be like to suit up and go drifting through the emptiness. He bet he wouldn’t hear anyone out there: no voices crowding at him from the edges of thoughts, clambering to be heard. It would be a nice vacation.

He wasn’t on a vacation right now.

If anything, the last five years had been a vacation, holed up on Mazzarine, living in that little shack on the edge of the water, repairing light boats for the alligator hunters.  Easy work, calming work. The alligator hunters stayed clear of him most of the time, and he was surprised by the gentleness of their thoughts, given what they did for a living. No strains of cruelty or surprising flares of darkness. That was Will’s real problem. Not that he’d been born an Empath—they were a dime a dozen these days, some new step in human evolution, blah blah fucking blah—but that his particular form of Empathy was tuned in specially to darkness. He couldn’t be one of those Empaths that explained to exo-veterinarians what their patients needed, oh no. He had to have insight into the violent, the disturbed, the pathological. Humanity’d had the capability to travel among the stars for almost two hundred years but they still hadn’t gotten rid of psychopaths.

The light above Will’s door blinked, bright red but silent. He sighed. Didn’t get up from his bed. Captain Crawford was on his way, then. They must have found one of the ships. Will had switched off the ship’s computer links in his room when he first came aboard the _Eagle_. Bad enough hearing the crew’s voices. It hadn’t occurred to him that it would mean Captain Crawford would have to come down here and speak to him personally.

The doorbell chimed. Will sat up, rubbed at his forehead. He could sense the captain out there, brusque, well-meaning. “Come in,” he said, and nothing happened—right, he’d switched off the computer links. He slid off the bed and opened the door manually.

“We found something,” Captain Crawford said. “Looks like a derelict, but we intercepted an distress beacon.”

A little shiver of fear worked its way down Will’s spine. “Any of the usual tells?” he asked. “The paintings on the side?”

Captain Crawford shook his head. “It’s not him.”

Will let out a slow breath. _Him_. The newsfeeds were calling him the Star Stag Killer, because of the murals he painted along the sides of the ships he attacked. A calling card. But Captain Crawford always left it at _him_. They didn’t need a name.

“We’re just obligated to check out any ship with a distress call,” Captain Crawford said. “We want you on the team. Listen for danger, that sort of thing.”

“Right.” Will nodded. He remembered that, vaguely, from his time training with the Galactic Coalition. Back when the Council still had delusions about his stability. A GC ship always had to help out a stranded vessel. Fine. Yes. This would be easy.

“Suit up.” Captain Crawford walked over to the doorway and glanced at Will over his shoulder. “And turn your damn computer link on. I’d been trying to get in contact with you for the last twenty minutes.”

 

* * *

 

The team piled into the shuttlecraft, a couple of grunts with light rifles slung across their chest and one of the science officers, Katz ( _For God’s sakes, call me Bev_ , she’d told Will when they met before boarding, _I hate that pseudo-military bullshit, don’t you_? Will honestly wasn’t sure.)

“You ready?” Bev asked him, checking the readings on her scanner. “Looking a little nervous.”

Really, she was the nervous one: Will could sense it wafting off of her, not so much a voice as a scent, like perfume. It was oddly comforting.

“I never liked shuttlecraft,” he said.

Bev laughed. “Yeah, me neither. You can just hear the screws falling out.”

“Please don’t say that.”

Bev grinned at him. “ _Teasing_. This GC stuff, it’s built to last.” And she thumped her armrest as if to prove her point. 

The engines in the shuttlecraft fired up, a low steady whine that drowned out Will’s thundering heartbeat. Unfortunately, his visor had all his vitals plastered along the bottom of his vision, heart rate, BP, a bunch of vaguely medical squiggles and numbers Will didn’t recognize. Back on the _Eagle_ , some medical officer was monitoring all of their vitals, ready to report if any of them dropped down to zero. Supposedly they could even revive the away team off-site. It was a small comfort.

The shuttled lifted up. It was unnerving, not being able to see anything but the grunts and Bev sitting across from him, still fiddling with her scanner. It lit up her face, a clean white light that accentuated her features. Pretty. She looked like some ancient painting of a saint.

There was a low, ominous grumbling deep in the shuttle’s engines, and then they swept forward. Will’s head snapped back against his seat. He took a deep breath. Bev hardly seemed to notice they were moving. She tucked the scanner back into its holster and then looked up to the front of the ship, even though there was nothing to see there.

“You think we’re going to find anything?” she called out. Will wasn’t sure if she was speaking to him, but one of the grunts responded before he could make a fool of himself.

“Hell no,” she said. “You know how likely it is someone’s still alive on these ghost ships?”

“Might be an android,” one of the other grunts said. “That happens now and then. Those things don’t fucking die.”

The grunts all laughed like this was funny. Bev didn’t, which just made Will like her more. 

A voice filtered through over the speakers. “Preparing to start laser-cutting,” it said. “Ready for impact.”

“My favorite part,” Bev said, and the grunts chuckled. Will gripped the armrest. _Ready for impact_. Really didn’t seem like something pleasant. But the rest of the crew were all taking it in stride, no overwhelming sense of fear. Just that baseline anxiety he’d been feeling the entire time.

The shuttlecraft shuddered to a stop. A loud metallic grinding noise came from outside, like jaws churning. Then the whole shuttle lit up red: the laser, burning away a hole in the side of the derelict. Best way to board, just attach the shuttle onto the side like a remora. No need to worry about airlocks or any of the rest.

The red light disappeared.

“We need your readings, Bev,” the disembodied voice said.

“I’m on on it.” Bev held up the scanner. A pale light washed back and forth across the far wall of the shuttle. “Looks clean.” She tapped something into the arm band of her suit and a new number appeared on Will’s visor. The air quality, maybe. 

A pause. Will held his breath. Then the wall of the shuttle slid away, revealing a round entrance into the derelict.

The grunts didn’t waste a second. They filed out one after another, guns propped up.

“You feel anything?” the disembodied voice asked, not from the shuttle this time, but straight into Will’s earpiece.

“No.” Will stood up, shaky, and followed Bev into the derelict. “I’m not sure anyone’s even ali—“

He froze.

“Graham? You there? Sounds like you cut off.”

“No, I’m here.” Will moved further down the corridor. There it was again, a little flicker of consciousness in the back of his head. Not the grunts. Not Bev. 

“There’s someone here,” he said. “I think. I can’t quite get ahold of them—“

“Copy that.” It was one of the grunts. “Dangerous?”

“I don’t—don’t _think_ so.”

Bev knocked against his arm and tilted her helmeted head toward the innards of the ship. Will nodded. They walked side by side through the corridor. The derelict wasn’t GC, not that Will could tell. Too opulent. Tile on the floors, a rich red velvet paint on the walls.

“Jesus, what is this place?” Bev’s voice was scratchy through the earpiece. “You sure you’re not getting anything, Will?”

“I don’t know what I’m getting.” The corridor dead-ended into a sort of antechamber that opened into another room, much more spacious. The grunts fanned out along the perimeters. Bev ran her scanner over the walls, the flooring, the chandelier. The glass glittered when the scanner’s light touched it.

“Not picking anything up,” she said.

That sense of consciousness fluttered again, stronger this time. It wasn’t frightened, it wasn’t dying, and it was shrouded in darkness: the three things Will hated encountering as an Empath.

“This way,” he said, and he walked through the antechamber into the larger room.

“Wait up!” one of the grunts shouted, and the disembodied voice said, “What the hell’s going on over there?”

Will stopped in the doorway. It was a library, the walls lined with shelves of expensive-looking glass recording platelets. The threw off dots of light as Bev scanned and the grunts pointed their light rifles around. Will stood very still, _listening_. He never had to strain this hard to grab ahold of someone, but he was certain, _certain_ , that there was a person onboard this ship, and that this person was still alive.

He reached down and switched off his earpiece. A hushed, breathy silence filled up his helmet. He closed his eyes. Concentrated. There—it flashed like lightning in the back of his thoughts. _Hello_. It was saying hello.

“There’s someone here!” Will shouted. He remembered he’d switched of his earpiece, turned it back on again.

“—Are they?” One of the grunts.

“Repeat,” Will said. He swung his gaze around the library. Nothing but glittering platelets.

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know. But I can feel them.” Will moved forward, up to the sliding door on the other side of the library. It opened for him like a sigh. The grunts crowded up around him.

“Stop going ahead,” one of them said. Will ignored her. He kept moving forward, through this new corridor. The conscience brightened, steadied. There was a calmness to it, a—curiosity. He wondered if it was even human. This looked like a human ship. Old-world human, even. But the consciousness didn’t _feel_ human, not entirely anyway. It was weird. Not bad, really. Just—weird.

The corridor swung around and opened up into a dining room. A long glossy black table, chairs pushed in, another chandelier hanging over head. Bev shoved her way forward and scanned. “Life signs!” she shouted, triumphant. “I picked up life signs!” She bent over her scanner. “This way.” 

She pointed to a pair of swinging double doors. The grunts formed a semi-circle around them.

“Be careful,” the disembodied voice said. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”

“Scanner says it’s human.” Bev looked up at the doors. “Will?”

“Not getting any sense of danger.”

“Let’s do this.”

The grunts chattered at each other with their incomprehensible military jargon. Will got the sense of a countdown. Everyone was nervous, tense. Except for him. This consciousness—it wasn’t going to hurt them. He didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t going to hurt them.

The grunts pushed the doors in.

Emotion flared up in Will’s head. He had no idea how to describe it: fear, excitement, that weird unwavering curiosity?

“Found him,” one of the grunts said. “Male. Unharmed.”

“Come on,” Bev said, and she and Will made their way through the doors, into a kitchen, everything gleaming, bright.

A man stood behind a counter. He wore an apron over clothes that were clearly fashionable and expensive, but now looked vaguely run-down, as if he’d worn them for too long. His hair hung in his eyes. He had a pot in one hand. A package of freeze-dried emergency rations lay in front of him, unopened. He looked at the grunts and at Bev and at Will, one at a time, and said something. Will couldn’t hear him through his helmet, but he got a general sense of amusement.

The man gestured at his food. The grunts looked at each other. Their light rifles were pointed at his chest but he didn’t seem to care.

“He’s harmless!” Will said into mouthpiece. “Just someone in need of rescue.”

“It’s just a precaution,” Bev said. “Turn up your outside speakers so you can talk to him, too.”

Right. Of course. Will never could get the hang of these suits. He reached down, turned on the outside speaker.

“—Appreciate this,” the man said. “I really do, even with the guns. I was about to suffer the indignity of eating rations.”

And with that he set the pot down, and took off his apron, and looked straight at Will.

“I suppose you’ll be taking me aboard your vessel now,” he said.

Will could only nod.


End file.
